The Defection Fallout

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Early the next morning, while Naoki was doing his morning training, he heard the rumor that the clan head had been attacked. That confirmed that the tissue Orochimaru had brought the day before truly belonged to Hiashi Hyuga.

He had already guessed as much, but the thought that Orochimaru could casually injure the strongest member of the Hyuga clan still left him disappointed. There must have been an ambush involved, but even so, the gap was obvious.

From Naoki's own experience, reaching the level of the Sannin through ordinary Hyuga training was almost impossibly difficult.

And when it came to talent, Naoki was plainly mediocre. His activated special genetic sequences made that clear.

An ordinary Hyuga usually had around twenty of the thirty-three special genetic sequences activated. An outstanding member like Hiashi Hyuga could reach twenty-eight. Naoki himself had only seventeen active sequences, noticeably below the clan average.

If he continued step by step along the normal path, Special Jonin might be the ceiling of his entire life.

The main family kept the details of Hiashi Hyuga's attack locked down.

Naoki suspected that when the attack happened, Hiashi had realized Orochimaru's identity. Orochimaru was the Third Hokage's disciple and one of the Sannin. His rank was high, his position sensitive, and the trouble surrounding him extremely difficult to handle. The main family likely had not reached an internal agreement yet, so naturally they said nothing to outsiders.

'If Orochimaru dared to move against the clan head, then he isn't afraid of being exposed. That confirms my guess. He has finished preparing for his defection. He could move at any time.'

After turning the matter over for a while, Naoki became even more certain that Orochimaru was about to defect.

For Naoki, that defection had both advantages and drawbacks. The advantage was that it removed the weight hanging over him. The drawback was that he lost the one person powerful enough to shelter him.

'Aside from Orochimaru, everyone who knew I was involved in human experimentation died during the war. As long as nothing goes wrong on Orochimaru's side, the village shouldn't be able to trace it back to me.'

The few people who had joined Orochimaru around the same time as Naoki had all died one after another in the war. After Naoki was transferred to the rear, the special nature of the Byakugan meant that he had worked in an independent laboratory. He had no contact with Orochimaru's other researchers. Aside from Orochimaru himself, no one knew which project he was responsible for.

After silently checking through every possible danger, Naoki resumed his morning training as if none of it had anything to do with him.

For the next few days, the village remained calm.

Then, on the third night, an ANBU wearing a fox mask suddenly appeared in Naoki's home and took him to one of the ANBU's temporary bases.

The base was located in the northwest corner of the village. It covered a large area and was heavily guarded. From what Naoki could detect, there were at least seven or eight ANBU squads stationed there.

After being taken into a small single-room hut, Naoki frowned faintly.

The room was tiny and had no furniture at all. Heavy iron bars had been installed outside the door, and beyond those bars stood an ANBU guard.

Calling this place a temporary base felt generous. A temporary prison was much closer to the truth.

There was no doubt about it. If the ANBU directly under the Hokage were moving on this scale, Orochimaru must have officially defected. It might have happened that very day, perhaps even that night.

Using the natural advantage of the Byakugan, Naoki calmly observed everything inside the temporary prison.

He was not the first shinobi brought here, and he was not the last. Even after him, more shinobi continued to be escorted in one after another.

Every detained shinobi was one of Orochimaru's subordinates. Added together, there were several hundred of them, including a number of elite jonin with solid reputations in the village.

That was not especially strange. During the war, Orochimaru had commanded multiple units. Over the years, it was perfectly normal for him to have several hundred former subordinates. Konoha had fielded more than ten thousand shinobi under wartime mobilization. If Orochimaru had not commanded at least a few hundred men, he would never have been qualified to compete with the Fourth for the Hokage's seat.

With several hundred detainees and nearly as many guards, the temporary prison quickly grew noisy.

Not everyone knew what had happened the way Naoki did. Among Orochimaru's detained subordinates, many had no idea he had defected, so they were furious about being locked up without explanation.

Only when the Third Hokage appeared did the noise gradually die down.

The Fourth Hokage had only recently taken office. Many of the village's affairs were still handled by the Third, and in the eyes of many shinobi, the Third was still the Hokage out of sheer habit.

Under the Third's supervision, the screening process began quickly.

The first to be questioned were naturally the elite jonin with real strength. Wartime-promoted chunin like Naoki would have to wait.

Three days passed in a blur.

Naoki knew his own position. A wartime chunin like him had been promoted as an exception to meet the demands of the war. In practical terms, his strength was only around that of a veteran genin. He was not important enough to draw much attention.

Even so, after being held for three full days without a single person questioning him, dissatisfaction began to build in his chest.

Clearly, the village's screening was not going smoothly. Many detainees simply refused to believe that Orochimaru, one of the Sannin, would defect, so they would not cooperate with the investigation.

The village leadership was also divided on whether torture should be used.

Simple questioning made it difficult to determine who among the detainees had participated in Orochimaru's human experiments and who might have been left behind as his mole. These shinobi had all received strict counter-interrogation training, and they had just survived a war. They were not fresh recruits.

But using torture carried its own risks. There were not one or two detainees. There were hundreds. Torturing hundreds of heroes who had just helped the village win a war because of Orochimaru's defection would hardly be a wise choice.

On the fifth day of Naoki's detention, Danzo appeared in the temporary prison.

He visited the detained jonin one by one. Naoki had no way of knowing exactly what they discussed, but when Danzo left, he took the vast majority of them with him.

'Danzo talked them into joining Root.'

Naoki did not need to think hard to guess the result.

If the village could not screen everyone through torture, then the detained jonin were undoubtedly its greatest source of instability. Allowing Danzo to recruit them into Root became the village's only workable option.

Those jonin clearly understood their own situation. Because they were former subordinates of Orochimaru, they had little chance of being accepted by the Fourth Hokage. The Fourth was still young. He might hold power for another twenty or thirty years. If they did not find a backer quickly, their days in the village would only grow harder. Entering Root, an organization that stood apart from the Fourth's direct control, became their best option.

In the days that followed, Root personnel also invited Naoki to join.

He declined politely. In his view, even defecting would be better than joining an organization like Root, which specialized in dirty work and could be turned into a scapegoat at any moment.

Fortunately, Root did not make things difficult for him. After being refused, they left without fuss.

Since the village had already allowed Danzo to recruit so many detained jonin, it would not permit him to reach too deeply into the detained chunin as well. Root's invitation to the chunin was more of a formality, and that was why Naoki dared to refuse.

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